Which Marketing Strategy Is the Right One for You? 

What is a marketing strategy? 

Feel like your business isn’t performing at its full potential online? Not reaching the audience you wanted? Try a marketing strategy!

A marketing strategy is basically a blueprint for all the marketing goals you want to achieve within your company. This can be from broadening your brands visibility and awareness to gaining the trust of your target audience. Here are my top 5 marketing strategies to further your online campaign and improve your internet presence.  

My Top 5 Marketing Strategies 

 

Content Marketing

Content marketing focuses on creating and posting valuable and relevant content. It also needs to be consistent to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. This can consist of infographics, webpages, podcasts, videos, blogs, webinars, eBooks etc.  

 

Advantages of Content Marketing 

Build brand awareness, trust and loyalty. 

• Potential customers that are viewing your content will almost immediately build an impression of your brand. Publishing well done, well-presented and up-to-date content will result in your business being seen as authoritative and trustworthy. This can develop more trust between you and your customers and even form a better business relationship! 

Reach an audience who may avoid ads. 

• Ads are everywhere nowadays. We are constantly seeing adverts which can result in many people using ad blocker on their computers and phones. Content marketing can help get your business around this software by letting the consumer be in charge of what they search for. If your content is valuable and relevant enough, it will ultimately lead them to your company. 

Increase of traffic and conversions.  

• Quality content means quality traffic! If your content is well written and well-presented it means more audience and a boost in traffic. Once your potential customers are actually on your site, you can persuade them to sign up to offers or even buy from you. 

 

Disadvantages of Content Marketing 

The benefits aren’t immediate. 

• Content marketing can be a long process, especially if it’s just you doing it yourself. The trial-and-error method is usually the safest and can help you learn from your mistakes. This allows you to see what works before you can genuinely see results.  

Skills and resources. 

• If you or your team aren’t experienced enough, you’ll need to outsource. It may mean buying subscriptions to online courses or bringing a whole new employee in. You’ll need to create all sorts of content and publish it across a number of platforms. Then view and understand the analytics. Developing your in-house skills is probably the best way forward but outsourcing can be costly. 

Finding content ideas. 

• We’ve all had those days when we feel like our brain just isn’t working. Having to constantly come up with new and exciting content can be difficult when we have those off days. This will eventually come easier as you go along and analyse how well your previous posts have done. The results may come slow so whenever you have an idea for new content, try to write it down there and then! 

 

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is very closely linked with content marketing in terms of building meaningful, lasting relationships with your customers. This type of marketing usually includes blog articles, content offers and social media. It also consists of making potential customers aware that your brand has value and that you’re a worthy investment. It lets consumers view your company as more humanised and that you genuinely care about them. 

 

Advantages of Inbound Marketing 

The customer is in charge. 

• Customers are doing all the work for you! They search for a keyword that you have specifically targeted which leads them to find and read your content. They may even reach out to you afterwards. This will let them be in charge the entire time and it means you don’t have to persuade or push ads at them. 

You become more trustworthy. 

• Similar to content marketing, by creating content that is genuinely helpful you can easily build relationships. You will be seen as more authoritative as long as your content is relevant for your specific audience. This is a great way to increase conversion rates. Not to mention your business will be viewed as the go to source for the topic of information you’re providing.  

We’re in the digital age! 

• Everyone sees a lot of ads no matter where they go. Whether that’s walking down the street, browsing the web or scrolling through Facebook. Most consumers are more interested in discovering a brand and learning about what they do themselves. This lets them make the next step on their own terms without feeling like they’re being bombarded. Inbound marketing allows them the freedom to search for what they need and for your business to fill the gap. 

 

Disadvantages of Inbound Marketing 

No quick and easy investment. 

• Search engines, building a brand and increasing your social media presence takes a lot of time. You will need to be producing, uploading and also promoting your content on a regular basis. This could take anywhere from a few months to a year before you start to see any sort of return or engagement. 

Your team needs a wide range of skills. 

• You will more than likely have to build a team to create, promote and manage content. Outsourcing courses to extend you and your team’s skills may charge a fee. Doing inbound all by yourself is possible but may result in taking up most of your time (which could be better spent elsewhere!). 

Measuring inbound can be a huge pain. 

• Your company will need to track rankings for every keyword and monitor performance extremely closely. It would take a sophisticated system to measure how many leads you’re generating through each of your platforms. Make sure you’re prepared to take this on before throwing yourself into it as it can be very time consuming. 

 

Social Media Marketing

Probably my favourite marketing strategy on the list, social media marketing focuses on providing users with content they find valuable. Using this well can result in increased visibility and traffic. It can also increase your relevancy on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. This type of marketing can reach a bigger market due to the amount of people online, whilst humanising your brand itself. 

 

Advantages of Social Media Marketing 

You could be everywhere! 

• Over 3 billion people use social media every day in one form or another. Everyone seems to own a smartphone, desktop or laptop. The amount of people I see on my commute to work that are looking down at their phones is almost impossible to count! Planning and executing a well thought out plan is usually the best way to boost your social media presence.  

Customers are satisfied. 

• It’s pretty standard nowadays to take selfies of yourself or your customers using your products or services. Followers will like, comment and share these posts which will spark potential customers’ interest. This can encourage them to ask questions relating to what you are offering or even buy from you. It is also easy to answer any queries or comments you get as messaging is direct. Relationships with customers seem to be a lot easier to build using social media. 

Cost effective. 

• When was the last time you paid to sign up to Facebook? Or paid to log into Instagram? It’s exactly the same for businesses! Social media marketing can save a ton of money if you know how to do it well. Creating a profile, signing in and seeing your interaction is completely and absolutely free for almost every single social media platform.  

 

Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing 

Potential to tarnish your brand. 

• Social media is a very public place with all sorts of content for us to view. There is a very high chance that people will express their dissatisfaction if and when they have any. This could reflect negatively on your business. Replying to these queries and criticisms are expected to be quick. Privately messaging options should also be available. Even if you are not at fault, it could possibly deter potential customers from buying or establishing a relationship.  

Exposure to competitors. 

• Social media marketing lets you study your competitors’ strategy quite closely, but this is also vice versa. Since social media is completely open to the public, your business can be exposed. It also puts you at risk of being outdone in the same sector or on the same targeted keywords as your business.  

Can be time-consuming. 

• Getting people to appreciate and share your posts can take time. Generating interaction is something that you need to build a reputation up for. Likes, shares and comments are important but be patient and write quality content to ensure they come.  

 

Search Engine Optimisation

The process of search engine optimisation (SEO) is to increase awareness and traffic to your business’ website.  This is done by tweaking parts of your site in order to appear among the top ‘unpaid’ search results. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are the most commonly used so they should be the ones you aim for. SEO automatically increases your audience in a targeted way. This means that your audience self-identifies themselves as someone who is interested in your product or service. Once again, technology seems to be doing our work for us! 

Advantages of Search Engine Optimisation 

Good reputation 

• Most search engine users will click on the first link on their search results page. This can be due to a number of things but it is usually because their issue needs a quick solution. Being higher up in results seems to give you a better reputation. The majority of users won’t even know that you’ve used SEO to organically move your website up the list.  

Tracking your results has never been easier. 

• With SEO software, you can see how much traffic your site is getting. It will also help see what specific keywords you rank on. It will even tell you how much time consumers are actually spending on your page. This information will basically give you quick and easy feedback to use on any adjustments you need. This will help continue the influx of traffic to your site. 

Targeted traffic. 

• Paid ads will always appear at the top of the search results page. A large number of searchers will actually ignore those paid listings and go straight for the organic results. These searchers are actually the audience you should be targeting and who you want to attract to your business. 

 

Disadvantages of Search Engine Optimisation 

Results take time and aren’t guaranteed. 

• Search engines take time to index the vast amount of content of an SEO campaign. This could result in your website not even ranking on certain terms and keywords for days or even weeks! 

Keywords are competitive. 

• Remember that your competitors are also likely to be trying to rank on the exact same keywords as you. If the market you’re aiming for is already quite saturated, then there’s a chance you may get lost in a vast ocean. Similar to if there are already any major, establish corporations – it’s likely you’ll rank below them. 

Algorithms are constantly changing. 

• Search engines, especially Google, frequently update their algorithms. This is mainly to get more accurate results for its users. This is great for searchers but can be really bad for businesses. The smallest changes to these codes can move your website from first to even the bottom of the third page! 

 

Search Engine Marketing 

Search engine marketing (SEM) is when businesses use paid advertisements to appear higher up on a search engine results page. It is also a marketing strategy tool that many companies use to grow their website traffic. Pay per click is one of the most popular tools that you could use in paid advertising. This is because a company will only pay the search engine a fee every time someone clicks on their ad. SEM is cost-effective in generating high visibility with the potential to adapt to multiple markets and audiences. 

 

Advantages of Search Engine Marketing 

Easy to measure. 

• Specific tools can give you a highly detailed report of how well your campaign is performing. This way you can always know what is happening with your ads. An analytics interface will also help you see what is happening at each moment. Using this information will help correct your campaign if you don’t get the results that you were looking for. 

Pay per click. 

• Pay per click, as mentioned before, is a tool that can be used within paid advertising. You will only need to pay when a searcher or a consumer clicks on that specific advert. Control your maximum daily budget that you’re willing to invest using this tool. You can even control the maximum cost per click you want to pay. 

Within everyone’s reach. 

• Everyone competes in equal conditions to rank in their specific keywords. From large companies to small bricks-and-mortar, from huge corporations to online businesses. You have the exact same opportunities as every other business to reach the first position for your targeted keywords. 

 

Disadvantages of Search Engine Marketing 

High long-term cost. 

• You will always have to pay for each of the visits from consumers your advert gets. Although, over time, you can optimise and make your campaigns more accurate and this can reduce costs per click. As your site grows in popularity, the cost on a whole could increase. 

The competition is high. 

• SEM has become extremely popular. There are many companies, both big and small, that compete to rank for the same targeted keywords. This vast competition can cause costs to rise and can be difficult to get a good ROI. 

People can find it invasive. 

• SEM involves showing users content that they sometimes didn’t ask for or seek out. This can be seen as ‘invading’ the consumers space or throwing your ads in their face. If your targeted audience or user has an ad blocker, they may not even see your ads.  

 

So, there are my top 5 marketing strategies. Have a good read of each marketing strategy and see which one would work best for your business. As long as you’re broadening your brands visibility and increasing traffic, any of these could work. Trial and error will always be the way forward to see what benefits you and what doesn’t. Don’t worry if you’re still unsure about each marketing strategy, there are plenty of blogs and articles out there to help you decide! Using a marketing strategy as well as a number of other techniques, could lead to a successful business. Make sure to check out the rest of my website for more tips, tricks and advice.